The Devil Next Door

Mr. Chalmers stood there, hands on hips, appraising the situation. Though he was in his sixties, he was still a large, well-muscled man with broad shoulders and a thick chest, the result of his twenty years in the Army as a paratrooper with both the 82 ^nd and 101 ^st Airborne Division. He still had the requisite thick neck and bristly crewcut, though now gone white.

“ Mr. Chalmers,” she said. “There’s something happening here. I don’t know what. But some kids at school went crazy like this and attacked a teacher and the janitor. They killed them.”

But Mr. Chalmers was not interested in that. “You boys want to kill this girl, don’t do it in my yard, you hear? This is my territory! My territory! I marked it with my scent and you better not cross my scent, you understand?”

Macy was shaking her head from side to side.

Mr. Chalmers, too.

It was in his eyes like it was in the eyes of the Hack twins: that seething, primal emptiness. That blankness that was without bottom.

“ How’d you mark your territory?” Mike asked. “We want to mark ours, too!”

Mr. Chalmers laughed. “Like this, boys. Just like this.”

And as Macy watched, he unzipped his pants and pulled his penis out. Still smiling, he proceeded to urinate on the steps, washing them down so all would know the boundaries of his territory.

When he was done, the boys sniffed it, recognizing his smell and remembering it.

Macy let out a scream.

“ Get her, boys!” Mr. Chalmers said. “Run her down! Whichever one takes her down first gets her! ”

Macy took off running, the twins in hot pursuit.

She darted down the sidewalk and then cut between two houses, ducked behind a garage. The twins came running, looking around, and then jogged away down the alley. Macy hid there, panting and sweating, something broken loose now in the back of her mind.

She saw the twins in the distance.

They had stripped off all their clothes now.

They were pissing on trees like dogs.

Macy tried to catch her breath, tried to hold her world together before it flew apart.

It was some kind of mass insanity, she decided, that’s what it was. That’s what had made those kids go crazy in Biolab and attack Mr. Cummings and Sully and that was what had made her go after Chelsea Paris. It was like some kind of insanity bug.

And now it had the Hack twins and Mr. Chalmers.

I have to get out of here, Macy found herself thinking. They could be everywhere. The whole town could be crazy…

And that was a possibility, she supposed.

She calmed herself the best she could and crossed the alley, slipped through a couple yards and thankfully saw no one. She didn’t know what was going on. But what she kept thinking was that if she had snapped out of it, maybe the others would, too. What amount of damage would be done by then she could not know and did not want to guess at “ Hey, Macy,” a voice said. “How’s my favorite girl?”

Macy turned, flooded with fear, and then for maybe two or three seconds she relaxed. She breathed. Why, it was only Mr. Kenning who lived up the block. Mr. Kenning was a Boy Scout troop leader, he announced football games for the Greenlawn High Wildcats, and he sold cars for a living. A nice man who loved sports and kids and his Irish Setter, Libby. He always had a few kind words for Macy.

Except…this was not that Mr. Kenning.

This Mr. Kenning was standing in the back yard, completely naked and covered with blood. Neither of which seemed to bother him in the least. He was smiling, hacking on something with a knife. Blood ran down his forearm and dripped from his elbow.

“ Come here, Macy. I have a secret I want to share with you.”

Macy just stood there, the instinctual need to flee very overpowering. She stepped around the hedges, knowing she shouldn’t, but needing to see just how bad this situation was.

“ Come here, Macy. I won’t bite you.”

I have a secret I want to share with you.

But Macy could see his secret quite plainly: there was a carcass hanging from the limb of Mr. Kenning’s apple tree and he was in the process of dressing it out. It was skinned, fleshy, bleeding. There was no doubt what it was. Even if she hadn’t seen the ragged pelt of lustrous orange fur at his feet, she would’ve recognized the dog. It was hung by the throat.

Mr. Kenning stabbed his knife into the torso, slitting it upwards. Libby’s viscera spilled out in a coiled, bloody mass. Mr. Kenning studied his dripping red fist that held the dripping red knife. He sniffed it, then licked the back of it.

“ Oh no,” Macy said, the world beginning to spin around her. “Oh no…oh no…oh no…”

Her whole body was shaking, tears rolling down her face, nausea rolling in her belly with the hot, rank stink of slaughtered dog.

Mr. Kenning kept smiling. That grin was depraved and obscene, filled with a raw unflinching appetite. He would rape her if he could, Macy knew, then he would feed on her.

“ Come here, Macy,” he said, his blood-spattered penis standing erect. “I’ll share my kill with you…if you share what you have with me.”